City Council moves to crack down on unregulated vape shops
Up and down Liberty Avenue in Downtown, the storefronts are rife with neon signs advertising sales of Delta-8, electronic cigarettes and countless other similar products. On some blocks, the businesses occupy one building space after another.
The stores are open at all hours of the day and have become a hub for illegal activity, officials said. City government has little recourse to permanently close them but, with new regulations passed unanimously Tuesday morning, Pittsburgh City Council is hoping to crack down on the proliferation of these shops.
Because the shops have been loosely regulated until now, it's hard to give a definitive number of how many are operating in Pittsburgh, said Councilman Bobby Wilson, who introduced the legislation.
The goal of the new zoning requirements is two-fold: to limit the number of vape shops in the city and to reduce minors' exposure to addictive and harmful products.
Under the new regulations, no more vape shops can open up in the Golden Triangle. Businesses are also prohibited from operating within 1,000 feet of a primary or secondary school and cannot be open between 11 p.m. and 9 a.m. The new rules don't impact licensed medical marijuana dispensaries.
It's a good start, said Councilman Bob Charland, who co-sponsored the legislation, but he is apprehensive about how the city will actually enforce these rules.
"We're not very good at enforcement," he said.
City Council has been debating how to regulate the shops for years since they began to spread when vape stores moved into retail spaces that were left empty after businesses shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I can walk down a city block and see at least three vape shops selling the same, unregulated products," Wilson said when he first proposed the legislation in September. "On top of that, the lights are so bright, it looks like a circus; no wonder our youth congregate in these spaces."
On East Carson Street on the South Side, Charland is dealing with a similar problem to the one Wilson has in Downtown. When storefronts empty out, it has been easy for these types of retail shops to move in.
Even with the new regulations, Charland said he's worried that these stores will be able to operate for months without any regulations because the enforcement mechanisms "don't move fast enough."
The Department of Permits, Licenses and Inspections is in charge of implementing the new rules, which require vape shops to obtain an occupancy permit to operate.
If they do not, PLI staff can cite the business up to three times, with at least a month between each citation, before the violation moves into the court system where the legal process could drag out for months.
"If we went through all the mechanisms, we wouldn't actually get in front of a judge until the end of summer," Charland said. "I hope that's something we can change, something we can speed up a little bit."
In the past, City Council has shortened the enforcement timelines for weed and trash violations, where PLI only has to wait five days between each citation.
The new regulations also only apply to newly opened vape shops; ones that can prove they were operating before the new rules went into effect are grandfathered in.
But the city will be keeping a close eye on them, Wilson said.
"They have to be a good neighbor still," he said. "If they're putting the trash out late, if they have unruly crowds outside of them, we're going to do everything we can … to crack down on any sort of activity, but as long as they follow the law they can still exist."
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This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 3:42 PM.